On a Friday at tea, I’d leave the weekly amount for all the shopping and whatever else she needed against the teapot. I’d never even see her take it. I’d look up at some stage and it’d be gone, into her apron pocket. But here’s the funniest thing, when I began to clear away some of her bits after she died – well, when I say ‘clear’ I more rummaged through them, reluctant as I was to part with even a thread – I kept finding money. She must never have spent all I gave. Never bothered sticking it in the bank or the credit union account. Trusted it instead to the pockets of old cardigans and dressing gowns and an old box that held your childhood drawings. Rainy day, I suppose. I must’ve found seven thousand in all. Don’t ask me, son, I’ve no idea.
In all our years I never stopped wanting her. Never. Not for one moment. Not for one second. I watched her skin survive the years, softly, folding upon itself. I touched it often, still hopelessly loving every bit of her, every line that claimed her, every new mark that stamped its permanency. We had our tough times like everyone else, but through it all I never looked at anyone else. Never desired another.
My hands begin to shake when I think over it all, son. Can I, hand on heart, say that I did my best for her?
‘Moanie Maurice,’ she used to call me in the latter years. But the awful truth of it is I would have been a thousand times worse without her. I could almost feel it as I walked through the door, the armour slipping away as she took my coat or kissed me on the cheek or put her hand to my back as she laid my dinner down. Jesus, son, I should have told her every feckin’ day what a marvel she was.
I’ve stopped sleeping, have I told you? Two hours, three if I’m lucky now and then I’m awake. Staring at the ceiling, going over it again, this bloody decision, because although I know it’s time to go, son, it’s still hard. Even now, there’s a little part of me that wonders am I doing the right thing at all. There was a woman in her eighties somewhere in England, so desperately lonely that she sat at her kitchen table and put an empty bag of frozen spinach over her head and suffocated herself. I mean, when I heard that I just thought, is that me, is that what it’s really come to?
I get off the stool and shove these quaking wrinkled hands deep down in my pockets. I need to move. I need to shake this off me.
‘Wait there,’ I say to my refilled glass as I take to the corridor again. Head down, I count: twenty-seven flowers in the carpet, six pairs of passing shoes, one fallen abandoned napkin. Swishing skirts and high-pitched voices filled with the night’s excitement pass me but make no impression. This place could be on fire and I wouldn’t give a damn now.
My piss is unreliable as usual. Of late it’s become erratic, threatening to flood its banks one minute and refusing to squeeze a drop the next. I stand at the urinal waiting for it to make its mind up.
‘Get out to fuck,’ I order. And for once in its life it obeys, flows like the Shannon, in a flash flood. A good omen, I think.
After, I stare down at the Armitage Shanks sink, letting the water flow for far too long, not wanting to look in the mirror just yet. But when I eventually lift my white fluffy mane, it is my father that greets me. It’s not the first time. As the years have gone on I’ve noticed him creep into my face more and more. Sunken cheeks and high forehead. But it’s mostly in the eyes. Grey marble beads of wisdom. I stand as tall as I can and smile. And then I reach my hand to touch the cold glass.
‘You’ve done mighty, son,’ he says, ‘mighty.’
It takes me by surprise, so much so my eyes sting, and I know if I’m not careful tears will force themselves out, making a spectacle of me. Enough of that now, I think, as I shake my head and make for the door.
On my way back up the corridor to the foyer, I wonder what would happen if I shouted out my intentions to the world. At the double doors I dance a shuffle as I manoeuvre my way through the couple coming in the opposite direction. Still got the moves. What would happen, do you think, if I leaned in to whisper in their ear to tell them of my plans, would they believe me? Would they whip out their phones and ring 999? Or would they simply smile and walk away from the drunk old raving fool?
On I go, overshooting my turning for the bar, my feet bringing me to stand once more at the picture of Hugh Dollard, in the foyer. He still looks nothing like the man I remember. What might he say were he to know that tonight I’ll sleep in the room that was once his? And that everything that was ever dear to him is now mine. I sway back and forth, my hands still in my pockets, thinking of my victories all over again.
‘Did you know Great-uncle Timothy?’ a voice asks me, interrupting my simple pleasures. I look around and see a face that I’ve not seen in years.
‘Hilary?’ I say, ‘Hilary Dollard?’
‘Dollard was never my surname, not even before I married Jason. It’s Bruton, please.’ She gives me a tight-lipped smile that suggests friendliness, but you can never be too careful. She’s got her daughter’s eyes, though, or Emily has got hers, whichever way round it might be. Soft brown. The generations washing away the Dollard sharpness. Oh, but all the Dollard ghosts: Amelia, Rachel, Hugh, Thomas, are there in hints, around the mouth and her cheekbones, diluted down into something … kinder. Thin, vulnerable, grey hair surrounds her face.
‘Mr Hannigan. I don’t think we’ve ever formally met.’
She gives me her hand. Unlike when I refused her husband’s, I take hers now and hold it. When she finally pulls it away she sits on the couch and watches the suited and booted men pass by. She bends her head to those who say hello like she is the Queen of Rainsford, which I suppose in a way, she is.
‘I thought I’d come and see the place in full swing, as they say.’ She gives me a smile that, again, seems genuine and pats the seat beside her.
I move towards it, but stay standing, so she must look up at me.
‘I will not bite, Mr Hannigan.’
‘I stopped being afraid of you Dollards a long time ago.’
‘Is that so?’ she says with a laugh. ‘I rather hoped we haunted your dreams.’
I look at her and can’t help but smile, I can imagine why Jason Bruton fell for her.
‘I’d take a nightmare any day, if it meant I could sleep. I haven’t been doing much of that lately,’ I say, finally sitting beside her.
She glances over to me and smiles the smile of a fellow sufferer before looking down at her hands, her face becoming serious.
‘Since the day Jason died I don’t think I’ve slept one full night unaided. In the beginning I would bolt awake thinking it must have been something I did that caused him to get so ill.’
I look at her but she doesn’t turn to me. We sit in the awkwardness of our silence for a moment, while all around us the place bustles. A man carrying a keyboard comes through the front doors and makes his way to the back corridor. I think of rising to assist him with the double doors but know my knees would not let me get there in time and so I watch him put his back to them and push his way through, nearly knocking over a young one coming from the other side with an unlit cigarette. They laugh at their near collision and she skips past him, smiling broadly as he and his keyboard squash back against the door. I see him delay his exit and watch in appreciation of the girl’s departing figure.
‘Pretty aren’t they?’ Hilary says. ‘Girls these days. They seem prettier than in our day. Taller. Definitely taller.’
I laugh at the compliment of her thinking we are the same age. I must be at least twenty years her senior.
‘You said “Timothy”,’ I say.
‘Pardon?’
‘Timothy, you said “Great-uncle Timothy”. Your man there in the picture. Emily told me it was Hugh Dollard, Thomas’s father.’ My mouth feels dry and I think of my whiskey sitting waiting for me on the bar. At least I hope it’s still there and Svetlana hasn’t cleared it by now.